Big Fish, Little Pond

A Dresden Files RPG

Alphonse LeChaise

Description:

High Concept: Reformed ghoul butcher
Invoke: Cutting things up; working with food; eating things or people; doing ghoulish things
Compel: Hunger; impulse control issues; trouble with those who see ghouls as enemies

Trouble Aspect: This Goddamn Conscience!
Invoke: Controlling himself; helping the innocent; hurting the guilty
Compel: Needing to control himself, help the innocent and only hurt the guilty; trouble with standard ghouls and other black-hat types

Other Aspects:

“Why can’t I just eat ‘em?”
Invoke: Pure combat abandon against evil enemies
Compel: Hunger; creepiness toward mortals; a general reluctance to wait long enough to have something like a “plan.”

The shakiest pillar of the community is still a pillar
Invoke: Dealing with Littletown, Paranet folks, or other supernatural critters who know me.
Compel: Dislike and distrust from those who see me as “shaky” or untrustworthy; compels to involve Alphonse in issues facing the Community

That’s how we do it down in Littletown
Invoke: Camaraderie with other Littletown folks; quick, powerful, and decisive action to end confrontation in one fell swoop
Compel: Distrust and prejudice (to a greater or lesser degree) toward those outside of Littletown; impatience with the everyday rituals of life, especially those he’s not familiar with.

Definitely Not a People Person.
Invoke: Scaring people out of their minds.
Compel: He scares people he doesn’t necessarily want scared out of their minds, too. Also, when he’s trying not to scare folks, he’s usually shaky at it.

“Believe it or not, I’m a team player.”
Invoke: Working together as part of a team, aiding others
Compel: Other team members not necessarily trusting him to pull his own weight.

Bio:

Alphonse appears, most of the time, to be a man of average height and wiry strength. He tends to wear flannel shirts, blue jeans, and a bloodstained butcher’s apron. His skin has been roughened to leather by the elements, and his light brown hair is wiry and scraggly. He looks like he might be anywhere between fourty and seventy years old.

In reality, he’s more than a hundred and fifty years old, and an inhuman monster. But, y’know, he’s not a bad guy, for all that.

Background:

Alphonse was born in the mid-1800s and spent most of his early life as a fairly standard example of a LeChaise ghoul. Eventually, he became a warrior of the clan and distinguished himself in battle. He joined a mercenary band known as the Bloodstripes and quickly rose to leadership. During this time, his bloodlust, both figurative and literal, began to grow beyond his ability to control. It got to the point where he would pause in the middle of a battle to eat from his opponents’ corpses. This was fine, until the Bloodstripes were hired by a shadowy necromancer in World War 1 and ordered to gather all slain corpses for his own purposes. Alphonse disobeyed, eating a truly prodigious number of their fallen enemies and allies alike. When the necromancer found out, he sent his minions after Alphonse and the other Bloodstripes. Knowing the necromancer’s power, Alphonse dissolved the Bloodstripes. The ghouls scattered, and Alphonse took his share of the earnings and travelled to America, trusting to the flowing currents of the oceans to protect him against the wizard’s wrath.

Alphonse arrived in New York City in 1917. He tried to lay low, but his hunger got the better of him, and before long he was on the run from both the mortal authorities and the Wardens of the White Council, having killed and eaten several low-level practitioners. His travels eventually led him to the southwest – and to the grounds of a native Shaman-wizard. Alphonse never knew why the man was in the area, or even his name. The ghoul had been travelling for weeks. He was hungry. The wizard was unaware of his presence, carving something painstakingly into the side of a desert cactus. Alphonse pounced on the shaman before the man could react and dealt him a fatal blow.

When Alphonse leaned in to cut free some of the Shaman’s muscles and eat them, he found the man still conscious. He coughed out blood and said, “You kill me for hunger, creature? Then let that hunger be your pain.” There was a swirl of power, and Alphonse passed out, feeling a yawning emptiness open within him.

Phase aspect: “Why can’t I just eat ‘em?”

Rising Action

Alphonse awoke to a feeling of incredible weakness. The great strength he had once possessed, which had let him challenge whole armies and devour powerful men with impunity, was gone. He felt diminished, weakened. More, he felt… odd. Uncertain what to do with himself, he wandered into the desert. Alone, without water, he swiftly succumbed to the elements.

He awoke, which surprised him. He was among a group of humans, which surprised him even more. The men, cattle handlers – among the last generation or two of the “cowboy” breed in America – had found him as they returned from bringing their cattle to market, and had taken pity on the apparently ill man when they came across him. They had set one of the youngest of their number to tend to him. At first, Alphonse played along with the situation, intending to rip the boy apart and eat him at the first chance he got, but when the boy turned to pour him some water, something stopped him from attacking. He felt… obligated to these humans, for their help. And even thinking about killing the child made him feel horrible – sick to his stomach, unable to consider food. In a moment of horror, Alphonse realized that he had been infected. Given a terrible disease. He had…

…A conscience!

The thought nearly destroyed him. He spent days in a listless funk, doing nothing, eating nothing, drinking only enough water to keep him alive, and even then only when the boy forced him.

Ironically, the ghoul’s life was saved when the cattle drive was attacked. A troll, feral and savage, had claimed part of the wilderness as his own territory, and attacked the band when they tried to pass through on the way back home. Without thinking, Alphonse leapt for the troll. And his conscience said nothing. His blood singing with the joy of it, he mauled the troll, and gleefully indulged himself by eating what remained.

The cowboys swiftly fled.

After cleaning himself up, Alphonse followed the ranchers’ tracks to a nearby town, taking a room in a boarding house there. The next day, he tracked down the terrified cattle herders and made them an offer. He still had quite a bit of money from his time in the Bloodstripes. He’d buy up their remaining cattle stock and set up shop as a butcher. In return, he said (suppressing the guilt the phrase elicited), they’d get to keep living. They shakily agreed.

Alphonse opened Al’s butcher shop later that year. It has remained open ever since, and Alphonse is a well-known person of interest in Tucson. Those in town who aren’t Clued In see him as the grandson of the original Alphonse – weird and creepy, but a stand up guy, active in the local neighborhood watch. Those who are in the know took longer to trust him, but his habit of destroying dangerous monsters (especially ones that preyed upon the mortals around him) eventually developed a conglomeration of respect, fear, and wary quasi-trust that persists until this day.

Phase aspect: The shakiest pillar of the community is still a pillar.

When members of the community start disappearing, Alphonse eagerly gets involved, looking forward to eating the culprit. But even the hungriest ghoul can’t eat a ghost. Now Alphonse has to face an enemy he can’t hit or kill, and he won’t even get a decent meal out of it. Being a decent guy really bites sometimes.

A phone call later and Nick Madison is on the scene, with his unique ability to talk with ghosts. Trouble is that this ghost isn’t looking to do any talking any time soon. And it’s pretty violent about that desire not to talk …

Phase aspect: That’s how we do it down in Littletown.

[Once Marcus manifested his powers, he] quickly realized that something strange was going on and started trying to find out about the occult and paranormal things, mostly New Age stuff without many answers. When powerless goth kids start practicing serious rituals, Marcus tries to find out where they are coming from. But will Marcus succeed when nobody knows who he is and against a Malvora in the shadows.

His visions lead him to the home of one of the rituals’ targets – in an apartment in Littletown. There, he encounters a creature from a horror movie – a real-life ghoul, in a bloodstained apron no less! The two fight, but the battle is interrupted by the realization that they’re both looking for the culprit. The strange pair forge an unlikely partnership in order to track down (and take down) this dangerous enemy.